2010: it's a wrap
So, 2010 been and almost gone and I haven't even had a go at WoW Cataclysm yet.
Back in the day, distracted from my NES, I imagined 2010 would have been more like the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey all world peace, dolphins and Roy Scheider. It turned out more like George Orwell's 1984 with the turnaround …

RE: Glaring omission?

"Well I'm level 85 already......" Grrrrr! I made the mistake of getting six chars up to level 80 whilst waiting for Cataclysm, and now I'm stuck slowly levelling all six plus a Worgen 'cos I can't make my mind up which one is more fun for smacking Horde with. If only I had the time needed to have a level 85 already, but then I have a smidgin of a social life. :P

MMPORPG OTY = WoW Cataclysm (apart from the Archeology profession)

FPS OTY = Black Ops, simply a ball for late night shoot-outs in the office.

It's simple when you know how

I had 9 80s going into cata.

I booked Tues-Thurs off work.

I geeked out and did what I always do which is level to cap on my main and then back to work today. Priorities are key here, I've 7 80s languishing in the doldroms while my Paladin gloriously hits things with the wildhammer. I've a level 81 warrior I'm levelling just for mining too.

But yes, organise your gaming and holiday time and you can have anything in the world... of warcraft.

The exp is pretty easy

Except in the dungeons those are hard. Kinda like old school Vanilla scholomance or stratholm hard(before they made them easier)

Only thing is I doubt I will level up all my 80's to 85 the quest are kinda tedious IMO(I have 12 80s, 7 alliance, and 5 horde). Then there are the quest that don't work at all which halt progression in a partcular zone seeing the questing is very linear...

Slightly different focus

Some things have been simplified such as espionage (ok, removed in this case), diplomacy and the United Nations BUT a lot of careful thought has gone into the balance and combat.

Railroads costing a couple of coins a tile is fine since they give you a bonus to production (as well as the movement bonuses) if you're connecting a city to the capital; this can stretch out your coal reserves if you're unlucky enough to have only a limited (or non-existent) supply by reducing your reliance on factories. This is just one nice balancing aspect.

The combat system is MASSIVELY improved - it's hard to overstate the tactical change that combat has undergone. No longer do you merely stack 50 Modern Armour units on a square and blitz the world - now you can only have one unit per tile but you can have ranged units for over other units ... this makes artillery (with their 3 tile range) immensely valuable - ditto on battleships.

You're also far less likely to suffer "weird" deaths in Civ V - even a badly damage Destroyer is not going to be further damaged by some barbarian archers on an island somewhere (at least I've never seen it).

... ummm ... yeah, I've clocked up almost 300 hours on Civ V since it was released a couple of months back *whistles* :)

Well...

Well...

I prefer the arcadey game mechanics of MW2, but online was just so painful, with being unable to join your mates on servers, randomly dropping from a group, buying the DLC and then them giving it away free. MW2 with dedi servers + no nuke + BO game modes. Lovely.

Bad Company

Nice to see some BFBC2 love after it's glaring omission from the console list, waiting with baited breath for the Nam dlc on the 21st to finally be able to fly Hueys around with Ride of the Valkyries blasting out.

What?

Did you even play these games, or just paste from other websites? Bloodbowl was as buggy as an anthill, and incomprehensibly confusing, even to those of us who played the damn board game in their youth. Even Penny Arcade couldn't love it, and they are amazingly biased in favour of anything that smells of board game...

No no no no no no no!

I love BBLE. Even with the incredibly annoying repetitions on Jim & Bob's commentating, for sheer gameplay alone, I find myself getting up a half hour early Monday to Friday to get a couple of downs in before work. Don't find it buggy at all tbh, and I've played it to death.

And PA? Tycho said "I want to recommend the game universally" and "Cyanide have made a videogame of Blood Bowl, and a pretty good one at that" (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2009/7/1/) - he did say it could do with patching, but most of the issues were sorted for Legendary Edition (he was talking about the original there - LE includes patches and a buncha new teams)

Best games

Napoleon Total War, I found awful and I didn't get much past the Tutorial. My Total War fix was satisfied this year with the MTW2 The Third Age mod. Fingers crossed for Shogun 2.

Blood Bowl Legendary Edition is brilliant, until you are unlucky enough to get a bad match over MM that just sucks out all the joy and life of the game.

My personal favourite this year has to be Mount&Blade: Warband. Those 200 player siege servers are the business. There is no greater pleasure on Earth, than throwing a javelin into the chest of a Swardian.

Really?

Because you had to have your 104.2% avoidance cap on your tank, stack FR for MC and BWL and getting anyone to go near BRD or LBRS for your Ony attunement on an alt was nigh on impossible. Raiding was UBRS, Strat and Scholo if you weren't hardcore, but it was still a bloody important part of the game. Pre-nerf Scholo required some good gear and better luck.

Lower level dungeoning stopped about the same time as most people got their first 60, not to mention that these days the RDF basically means you can level only in instances (and use tabards for rep in them now too).

Vanilla gets a lot of nostaligia but really, my god, things are much better now.

Agreed

Yeah!

Imagine spending a few hundred quid on a toy and simply wanting to play a few games for a laugh! Arseholes!

They should be spending thousands on lots of unique bits of kit, then hours tuning it all up just to play the latest game for the next 3 months, by which time the kit will be too old for the latest games and having to start all over again! Of course let's not forget the privilege of making up one of those silly little tag-banners proudly displaying their souped-up Wanker-fest box's specs so they can brag about it to other sad bastids on the gamer forums!

Yep, console gamers are pretty stupid bunch, imagine trying to get to play games the easy way without a lot of fuss or expense!!

Company of Heroes is still peak

Still playing. Added all three over my time, and add eastern front (from eastern front.org) for a slice or Russians. A pinnacle of RTS PC gaming, and superior to the later and poorer DOW II (of which THQ keep churning more out for, and missing the boat completely)

THQ should re-wrap this up in a single game and put it back on the market, and get back to developing it (they have in a way, as they are pushing COHO - the onlive version for free).

Not a big fan of games in 2010 - most seem poor and are console twists. Best racing game remains (IMHO) Race On.

Will there be cake?

re: will there be cake

Bah

In 16 or 18 odd years of first person shooter gaming the best piece of work I've seen is L4D (and L4D2). Superior game play does not need DX10/DX11/DX420, it just needs a good adaptive game model. My $0.02.

RE: Bah

"In 16 or 18 odd years of first person shooter gaming the best piece of work I've seen is L4D....." One of the perks of my job is the ability to squirrel away old servers on the office LAN for use as out-of-hours games servers and storage for old games. Alledgedly. We have some interesting antiques which still get fired up every now and again when we're bored of the latest'n'greatest PC offerings, and the ones that we don't seem capable of wiping off the servers are Quake, Quake2, and Counter Strike CZ. Yesterday, whilst checking for this post, I realised we still even had a few people playing Carmaggedon on a regular basis!